Baking With Kids

My mom is the reason that I've gotten into baking. She never ceases to astound and inspire me, especially in the kitchen! I only hope that one day I can have that effect on my own little ones. But, I'm not a mom... yet! But that doesn't mean I don't have a few special little munchkins in my life. So, I'd like to introduce you to my little helper, Hailey!

This is quite possibly one of the coolest kids I've ever had the fortune of hanging out with. And let me tell you, she knows her baking. So much so that I pretty much read out the ingredients, hung back, and let her do her thing!

Since I had a little partner to bake with, I wanted to do something fun and really different but still simple. After searching the web, I decided to try a new spin on cupcakes- baking them in ice cream cones!

We kept the flavors simple- yellow cake and vanilla buttercream frosting. For the cake, I used a recipe from http://allrecipes.com/ as it was very simple and had RAVE reviews. And I can see why, it's a really moist, delicious yellow cake!

Simple White Cake

- 1 cup sugar

- 1/2 cup butter (1 stick)

- 2 eggs

- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

- 1 1/2 half cups all-purpose flour

- 1 3/4 teaspoon baking powder

- 1/2 cup milk

1. Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees F. Line cupcake tins with ice cream cones and set aside. I used muffin tins since it spaced them out a little more.

2. In a medium bowl, cream together sugar and butter. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then add vanilla. Combine flour and baking powder and add to creamed mixture and mix until incorporated. Stir in milk until batter is smooth.

She was SO good with measuring.

3. Pour or spoon batter into cones. I found using an ice cream scooper was the easiest and neatest way to do this.

4. Bake 20- 25 minutes. Cupcakes are done when a toothpick inserted comes out clean. Let cool before frosting.

Et voila!

From here, we made our tried and true favorite- Wilton's buttercream recipe. You can find the recipe here in our football cake post. It only takes a minute or two to whip up and it is delectable. Again, I made Hailey do most of the work.

And boy did she hate sifting! LOL!

But she was cool with it, as long as she got to lick the paddle.

From here, I piped the buttercream frosting onto our cupcakes cones using a Wilton 2D tip. This is usually my go-to tip for frosting cupcakes. It always comes out looking fancy and leaves room for imperfections.

After eating one (okay, two), I realized we forgot to add sprinkles! Whoops!

Thanks again for stopping by!